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Peace of mind comes from the quieting of the voice of ego. Ego is forever mumbling to itself, "If only I had behaved differently when such and such was happening" and "Tomorrow I am going to finally do so and so". This continual internal seesaw between brooding on the past and fears and desires for the future keeps the mind in a turmoil of self absorption.

There are many methods of turning the voice of ego off, temporarily at least, all the way from physical activity so extreme that it fixes all one's attention on the perilous moment to meditation so deep that the meditator may appears to have left this world altogether. People who drive race cars for a living and pursue extreme sports are at one end of the spectrum, yogis and lamas at the other. In between lie those who achieve what is called "flow state" in the performance of some skill, such as painting, playing music, doing complex math problems, or playing a demanding sport.

For an ordinary person with a daily life that doesn't leave space for climbing K2 or learning to build a perfect violin, meditation is the most accessible method of attaining those moments of peace that help us to keep our balance and our sanity. One effective approach is to sit quietly where you know you won't be disturbed, close your eyes, and try to focus on the world outside of you.

The goal is to become completely absorbed in attending fully to the sounds and scents around you, to the position of your body and the movement and temperature of the air on your skin and hair, and so on. In this attentiveness the usual mental monkey-chatter of the self becomes distanced, if not actually stilled, while you becomes a vessel filled with whatever the immediate world is offering presenting to your senses.

Another approach is the exact opposite: try to turn consciousness away from what is outside and attend instead to whatever you can find inside yourself: the feel of the mind itself, its workings and diversions and general activity, which you will try to observe without judgment, impatience, or any attempt to control or interfere. This, which is Zen-style meditation, is much tougher: Paying close attention to your physical surroundings engages the emotions much less than really sitting quietly with your own inner self, where you must resist entanglement in self-critical reactions. Some people recommend inwardly repeating a mantra, or some other deliberately chosen point of focus, to try to disengage the emotions.

The technique of focusing outward is more restful, the technique of focusing inward more strenuous. Both methods can lead to a welcome relief from the nagging voice of ego - "I forgot to do that, if don't do this then someone will be angry with me, when can I find time to do that other thing?" - because both methods work by focusing awareness on the immediate moment, inwardly or outwardly - and then on the moment after that, and the one after that, instead of on personal failures and successes of yesterday and fears and schemes of tomorrow.

One of the greatest powers of the human mind is its ability to "bind" time - that is, to look back into memory and to look ahead into possibilities and plans. Disengaging preoccupation with either past or future, by way of attaining a flow-state of activity or by meditation, is an effective approach to achieving the peace of mind that we need to steady us and calm us in the midst of all our busy time-binding plans and concerns.

You can't live your whole life there, in the quiet eye of the ego's permanent storm; if we could, no one would do anything. But you can rest there, and reconnect with the simple, immediate wonder of being here now.

Learn more about this author, Suzy Charnas.
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